Tom Hudson Announces Retirement After 21 Wyoming High School State Championships

Laramie High Swimming head coach Tom Hudson announced his retirement on June 11th. He has led the team for 32 years, building the most dominant high school program in Wyoming.

Over the years, Hudson’s athletes have collected 21 Class 4A team state championships and 31 Class 4A East Conference team titles. In swimming & diving, Class 4A houses the state’s biggest high schools.

The Plainsmen girls’ and boys’ teams have each won the past 5 consecutive state titles. 30 of Hudson’s swimmers have been named to the All-American list. To achieve this title, swimmers must have earned a minimum GPA of 3.5 and swam a time in any individual event equal to or faster than the Winter Junior qualifying time standard between September 1, 2021 and August 31, 2022.

Hudson has been named the Wyoming Class 4A Coach of the Year 26 times and the Conference Coach of the Year 33 times in his career. In 2008, he received both the National Interscholastic Swimming Coaches Association of America (NISCA) Outstanding Service Award and the David H. Robertson Excellence in Coaching Award. He then was named the National High School Athletic Coaches Association (NHSACA) National Swimming Coach of the Year in 2016.

In April of this year, Hudson was inducted into the NISCA National High School Hall of Fame. A WyoPreps article says that Hudson is “one of the best swim coaches in the history of Wyoming” and deserves his induction into the National Hall of Fame.

In a WyoPreps interview about his recent NISCA Hall of Fame induction, Hudson shared his gratitude for being recognized as the Hall of Fame award winner by thousands of his colleagues and reflected on his coaching career at Laramie. “To get to student teach for the great Layne Kopischka… that was probably the biggest break because I learned so much from him and got involved with Laramie High School swimming… The rest is history.”